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Transport

Bikesharing: Way To Go!
There are orange, yellow and other brightly coloured rental bikes in cities in Asia. The bikes are outside train stations and condo gates. (prepositions of place)Elementary

He's Over Roads
Benjamin David swims to work in Munich. He was tired of taking a bus or bike to work every day on congested streets. Now he gets into the River Isar and swims to work. (Transport, adjectives.) Elementary

U.S. Makers Moving Homeward?
Why move production from the world's low-cost workshop back to a unionized U.S. factory where wages are six times higher than in China? Efficiency. Monster Moto's experience is an example of the obstacles American companies face as they, along with President Donald Trump, try to rebuild American manufacturing. (Business, China, the United States, brainstorming, despite and however.)Advanced

Behave or Hop Off
Loud or sleeping people will soon be asked to leave buses and light rail trains in Sacramento under new rules approved by transportation officials, though efforts to ban smelly riders did not pass. (Transport, rules, behavior.)Intermediate

Children Cut Things Closer
Children may cut things closer than their parents realize when it comes to guessing how far cars are from an intersection or how long it takes to safely reach the other side, a small study suggests. (Traffic safety and children.)Upper-Intermediate

Air Rage
An argument over leg room and reclining seats forced a Florida-bound flight from New York to divert to a different airport late on Monday, the third such incident of a midair disruption caused by passengers in about a week. (Flying, midair arguments, prepositions, role-plays.)Intermediate

Surprise Trips
A 9-year-old boy from Minneapolis went through security at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and caught a flight to Las Vegas without a ticket and three German children aged five, six and seven who said they were fed up with cold weather at home set off on a voyage to Africa but only got as far as the local train station. (Children and mishaps, transport, taxis, past simple and past continuous tenses, ordinal numbers, the prefix -un.)Pre-Intermediate

Life and death on India's Network
As the Kalka Mail train pulls into Delhi railway station at dawn, it is every man, woman and child for themselves. Before the train has stopped, crowds elbow and jostle into packed compartments destined for Kolkata, 1,500 km (930 miles) and 25 hours away on one of the largest, most decrepit and dangerous rail networks in the world. (Train travel, business investment, India, descriptive verbs.)Advanced

Drive For Status
In Tebet, Indonesia houses cost around $100,000. Outside many of the [houses] are Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs and Jeeps - imported cars worth as much as the houses themselves. In Jakarta drivers show off sleek Italian sports cars, British Bentleys, and the most expensive people carriers. The luxury cars are a sign of the growing wealth of the middle class in Indonesia. Cars, status symbols, Indonesia, shopping, present continuous.)Pre-Intermediate

Teaching Millions the Art of War
China is rapidly becoming a country on wheels and its crowded driving schools are racing to churn out licensed drivers as fast as cars roll off the assembly lines. But judging by the daily smash-ups and blatant disregard for even basic traffic rules on China's roadways, quantity seems to have trumped quality at many schools. (Driving and driving tests, Beijing, cars.)Advanced

Hot bodies
Using body heat from train commuters to warm buildings. (Energy, the future, word families, discussion, mixed questions, comprehension, will used to describe facts in the future, completing a diagram.)Pre-Intermediate

On Your Bike
A fleet of 6,000 bicycles for hire will hit the streets of central London on Friday when the city's mayor Boris Johnson launches a scheme intended to fuel a cycling revolution in the congested capital. (Traffic problems, bicycles, London, concept of offering a service for free, definite articles.)Upper-Intermediate

Beijing Driving Guide
Here are some tips about how to drive in Beijing, a city with three million vehicles on its roads. (Driving, road safety, Beijing, filling gaps, matching sentence halves, pairwork reading, discussion, language focus on the definite article.)Upper-Intermediate

Greyhound Gives a Picture
Every morning a Greyhound bus loads up with passengers to start its journey to Atlanta. The ride provides an insight into the lives of America's poor as the bus crosses the Deep South states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. (Greyhound bus travel, descriptions of people, discussion, completing the gaps, choosing the best headline, completing a summary, understanding points of view and purpose, word families, writing an email.)Advanced

Mad Dash
A German mother-of-five drove her son to a jewelry store he wanted to rob because she was afraid he may come to some harm and a devoted mother traveled 900 miles (1,450 km) to take her son his GameBoy that he had left behind when he went on a school trip. (Parents, parenting, children, sequencing, irony, idioms).Pre-Intermediate Lesson Updated: 5 June 2007

Yellow cabs to go Green
New York City's famed yellow taxi cabs will go green within five years...1,000 hybrid taxis -- powered by gasoline and electricity -- would be introduced by October 2008. (Alternative fuels, transport, the environment, hybrid vehicles, discussion, skimming, choose the best answer, reading and notetaking, first conditional, Internet research.)Intermediate

Safer Cars For Pedestrians
Safety stickers required on new cars in 2007, energy-absorbing bumpers, pop-up engine covers and windshield air bags could soon be added, child-safety seat restraints for children much safer than ordinary seat belts in crashes. (Safety features for cars and pedestrian fatalities, jigsaw reading, zero, definite and indefinite articles, listening and gap fill.)Upper-Intermediate

Head Room for Cyclists
Motorists give greater leeway to cyclists who do not wear safety helmets, according to a study by a academic in Britain who was hit by traffic twice as he rode his bike to carry out his research. (Bicycles, traffic safety, completing a summary, categorizing words, comprehension, articles - definite and indefinite)Upper-Intermediate

Round Trips
The two articles in the lesson are about sisters and a teenager who have problems getting to their destinations. (Travel, planes, past continuous, split reading.)Elementary

Bag Lady Holds Up Plane
Police took a woman off an airplane after she refused to put her handbag under the seat. (Flights, travel, safety and security checks, airplane vocabulary, prepositions of place, designer clothes, true or false, fill the gaps, discussion.)Elementary

"Hello, is that Travel Dot Com?"
Online travel booking was meant to save businesses money, and make the whole process easy and painless. However, some problems have emerged, and business people are again reaching for the phone to make travel arrangements the old-fashioned way. (Business travel, online business, discussion, travel vocabulary, finding the main idea, sequencing, ranking and listing activity, Internet research.)Upper-Intermediate

Delivering The Mail
This is about postalworkers who won't deliver the mail when it's too cold and postalworkers using scooters to deliver mail. (Transport, mail, jobs, addressing, France, Canada, the weather, the present simple, the present continuous.) Elementary

The Shape of Things to Come
A shiny white pod that has begun road tests may well be the taxi of the future. The pod, known as ULTra -- Urban Light Transport -- could make driver-free transport a reality and not just the stuff of futuristic fantasy. (Public transport, transport problems, technology, the future, summarizing, definite and indefinite articles.)Upper-Intermediate

Global Bicycle Thieves
Amsterdam police will use bicycles equipped with hidden GPS transmitters to bait thieves and track them down in the latest effort to stamp out rampant bike theft. (Theft, GPS, Amsterdam, discussion, predicting from the headline, guessing meanings from context, mixed questions, completing a table of information, true, false or not given, words used as nouns and verbs, word search puzzle.)Intermediate

In A Crate
A man trying to save a little money, traveled in an air cargo crate by plane from New York to Texas. Investigators are now asking him questions about his trip. (Bizarre stories, deliveries, predicting, understanding the main idea, making questions, ordering events, reading for detail, personal pronouns, sequencing game.)Elementary

A Rude Passenger
A Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore to Brisbane, Australia made an unscheduled stop to eject a passenger who became unruly after a heated argument with his girlfriend. The man may have to pay the A$25,000 bill. (Airplane travel, passenger behavior, sequencing, summarizing, discussion, true or false, interview, word forms, pair crossword.)Pre-Intermediate

Missing Mouse
A missing mouse kept a Swiss airplane on the ground for more than a day while officials put carbon dioxide into the plane's cargo hold to kill it. (Air travel, strange but true stories, predicting, constructing questions, information exchange, main idea, sequencing, infinitive of purpose, word find puzzle, air travel vocabulary, ranking, summarizing.)
Pre-Intermediate

Safe SUVs?
In a land where bigger is usually thought of as better, Americans love their sports utility vehicles and they are not going to give them up. (SUVs, fuel consumption, talking about cars, prediction, scanning, true or false, reading for detail, suffixes, discussion, matching sentence beginnings and endings, sell a car information transfer activity.)Pre-Intermediate

Up, up and away!
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a strap-on flying machine. And it could be yours on eBay for $1 million with just one catch -- you have to agree not to use it. (Flying machines, auctions, listening for gist, information exchange, reading for specific information, adjectives, persuasive essay.)Advanced

An Unusual Job
A missile storage space on a US aircraft carrier is a strange place to find a car salesman, but Paul St Pierre has spent the last five years on US navy ships selling motorbikes and cars to sailors with plenty of time on their hands and nowhere to spend their money. (Life on a warship, motorbikes, 'find someone who' game, different types of employment, understanding the headline, choose the best answer, true or false, 'even though'.)Pre-Intermediate

Knowing How to Drive a Car
Two Canadians learned that knowing how to drive a car is important when you want to steal one. (Bizarre crimes, matching pictures and information, gap fill, comprehension, to know how to do something, word find puzzle, discussion.)Elementary

No Driver's License
A German motorist who was sentenced to prison for repeatedly driving without a license was caught driving just moments after leaving the court, police said. (Careless driving, matching pictures and words, prepositions, word find, sequencing, comprehension, true or false, discussion, role-play.)Pre-Intermediate

Homeless Problem
Faced with the worst homeless crisis in New York's history, officials are considering whether cruise ships tied up at city docks could be used as temporary housing. (Accommodation for the homeless, complete the headline, ordering ideas, scanning, true or false, meanings in context, -ed clauses, discussion.)Upper-Intermediate

Free To Speed
A computer game company's offer to pay the speeding fines of all British drivers as part of an advertising promotion for a new motor racing game has been branded irresponsible and dangerous by the government. (Dangerous driving and speeding, scanning, true or false, direct and reported speech, the prefix 'ir-', discussion, writing a radio advertisement.)Upper-Intermediate

Do You Want To Save The Planet?
Some campaigners insisted on going overland to Marrakesh's U.N. conference on climate change, not because they are scared of flying, but because they are worried about what airplanes do to the planet. (Airplane emissions and their effect on the environment, avoiding flying because of environmental impact, discussion, true, false or not given, prepositions 'by' and 'or' and methods of travel, dialogue, fluency practice, crossword - environmental words.)Intermediate

Stop That Train!
A British train driver had to run 100 yards along the station platform to catch his train after it decided to start its journey without him. (Train travel, matching information and pictures, train vocabulary, comprehension, sequencing, writing a headline, the structure ...as+adverb+as I can, word find puzzle.)Elementary

Around The World In A Balloon
U.S. balloonist Steve Fossett ended his record-breaking solo round-the-world flight being dragged like a rag-doll through the dusty Australian outback. (World records, ballooning, ranking dangerous activities, comprehension, cloze listening, the structure 'by + -ing', planning a trip around the world.)Intermediate

Parking Meters
Hundreds of motorists didn't have to pay for parking when new solar-powered parking meters stopped working because of Britain's bad weather. (Solar power, traffic, cars, sequencing, use of 'don't have to'.)Elementary

Space Travel
One lucky Briton is set to win a prize that's literally out of this world -- a trip into space. (Competitions, prizes, space travel, the solar system, suffixes, prepositions ‘before’ and ‘after’ followed by a verb.)Upper-Intermediate

Skip-Skipper-Skipping
These three words look and sound as if they are related to each other, but you may be surprised to know that they came into English from three different languages, and have no connection at all. They are, in fact, a good example of how English borrows words from other languages.Intermediate

Happy Travels
Taking the train in Japan and want to avoid annoying fellow passengers? Keep conversation to a whisper, turn down your iPod and put your phone on vibration mode, a recent survey showed. For Japanese commuters, noise is the biggest issue. A British train passenger got a surprise when he wrote to a railway company expressing appreciation for a good journey - it sent him two letters of apology. (Travel, manners, apologizing, direct and reported speech, article revision)Upper-Intermediate

Traffic Vouchers
In order to reduce rush-hour traffic jams, a market to trade traffic vouchers which give each citizen a certain amount of travel, may be set up in Belgium. (Traffic jams, laws, trading, 'Want to', 'hope to' and 'would like/love to')
Pre-Intermediate

Business Class
Portland, Oregon scored top marks as the favorite U.S. airport for business travelers, while Singapore was the number one destination for international travel, according to a new survey. "This is a poll of our readers, who leave no corner of the globe untraveled in the name of work,". (Business travel, airports, matching and listening game, functional language - booking an air ticket, requesting, apologizing, socializing, facts and figures.)Upper-Intermediate